website-logo
SUBSCRIBE TODAY

Stay up to date with the latest trends, innovations and insights.

Digital Innovation in Healthcare: An Interview With Diagnoss CEO and Co-Founder Abboud Chaballout

James Ardis

featuredimage()

As the public continues to grapple with a global pandemic, they depend on the help of physicians more than ever before. This has led to high levels of burnout as physicians contend with growing demands. Plus, the hours these professionals spend each day entering information into an electronic health record (EHR) has compounded their exhaustion. This record system requires physicians to document each patient visit and select the correct medical codes to charge insurance companies properly.

Healthcare entrepreneur Abboud Chaballout realized that the resulting physician burnout, administrative error, and the cumbersome nature of EHRs were exacerbating financial losses for clinics and hospitals throughout the country. Plus, the cryptic medical coding system inside EHRs meant that healthcare organizations were not charging insurance companies as much as they should, leaving hard-earned money on the table. Chaballout helped found Diagnoss to address these issues. We sat down with Chaballout to discuss his company, its transformation over time, and where he sees even more opportunities to innovate in healthcare technology.

Healthcare digital innovator AbboudChaballout
Abboud Chaballout, Diagnoss CEO and Co-Founder

Programmers: Before we discuss Diagnoss specifically, I’d like to hear more about the pain points in the healthcare industry that made such a solution necessary. What did you see in electronic health records (EHRs), medical codes, and elsewhere that made you realize something like Diagnoss needed to exist?

Abboud Chaballout: One massive problem I saw was that medical establishments were losing billions of dollars a year due to interconnected issues revolving around physician burnout, administrative error, and the sheer inefficiencies of EHRs.

Programmers: What is Diagnoss, and how does it uniquely address the problems you just described?

Chaballout: I realized these providers need a solution that supports them at the point of patient care. This is a moment in time where opportunities to either save time or improve outcomes are uniquely available.

That’s why we created the Diagnoss EHR assistant for providers. It’s a sidebar system for which we’ve filed a series of provisional patents. It follows the doctor from patient to patient and gives them access to information they would otherwise have to dig for and insights they wouldn’t normally have.

v: Previously, Diagnoss was mostly focused on assisting with medical coding. However, your company has recently adopted a more robust set of services that streamline how physicians enter and access data in EHRs. Give us an idea of why your organization made this pivot.

Chaballout: It wasn’t so much of a pivot as it was an expansion of vision. When we were thinking about medical coding, we were focused on helping the provider pick codes in real-time as they’re documenting the patient encounter. To do that, we had to build a system and infrastructure that would allow such real-time functionality. Naturally, while speaking to customers and seeking their feedback, we realized that what we’ve made was a capable EHR assistant that can support doctors in many ways beyond medical coding.

“I realized these providers need a solution that supports them at the point of patient care. This is a moment in time where opportunities to either save time or improve outcomes are uniquely available.”
Abboud Chaballout, Diagnoss CEO and Co-Founder

Programmers: What work needed to be done behind the scenes to make this expansion possible?

Chaballout: We built out a flexible and modular system that can follow a doctor around from patient to patient and deliver personalized support. When I say flexible and modular, I’m talking about the ability to build and add any number of software tools that can then be powered by numerous AI models.

Programmers: Physician burnout is a major discussion right now in the healthcare industry. Of course, Diagnoss is in a great position to alleviate some of that burnout by making EHRs easier for data input and review. However, where else do you see opportunities to address this issue?

Chaballout: The notation of the patient encounter itself is a massive opportunity. Many AI-powered scribe technologies exist to help here, and I’m a huge fan.

Programmers: Working with EHRs for American healthcare organizations, Diagnoss is dealing with a lot of HIPAA-protected information. Tell us more about the processes Diagnoss uses to ensure everything it does is HIPAA-compliant.

Chaballout: All our data, including any protected health information (PHI), are encrypted both in transit and at rest, using the latest standards. Additionally, we leverage all the security aspects of AWS.

Programmers: Is there anything else you would like our audience to know about Diagnoss?

Abboud Chaballout: While supporting physicians at the point of patient care is our mission, we’ve built technology that, for the first time, provides administrators with the ability to supercharge their clinical teams in a more nuanced and intentional manner. In other words, the Diagnoss EHR assistant is the command center from which administrators can drive their organization’s goals, whether it be enhancing clinical outcomes or reducing costs.

It’s one thing to meet with providers and inform them of the latest CMS code updates, for example. But it’s so much more effective to present that information to providers in real-time, at the point of patient care, personalized to the patient encounter.

Lastly, we view the clinics and hospitals we work with as partners. We like to understand the pain points, so we can tailor our solution to drive the value they really need.

Stay up to date on the latest trends, innovations and insights.